I've read that big pharma are primarily patent companies: most of the actual research is done by universities, then most of the production is outsourced.
Pharma companies spend 10x what universities and the NIH do.
The only grain of truth in it is if you compare a tiny subset of what pharma companies do, and look only are extremely early drug exploration, and ignore all of the subsequent development like drug screening, testing, formulation, and clinical trials.